


Warriors Don't Cry

by Blue_Five



Category: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 05:21:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9705131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Five/pseuds/Blue_Five
Summary: Starbuck has always loved his captain.  He can't imagine life without him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm still mourning my beloved Captain Apollo and I just had to write something.

He stands at the room’s window. It’s as long as the room itself and it offers a view that never fails to take his breath away – a spinning blue marble lying on diamond encrusted black velvet.  The planet, or at least the dream of her, has been so much a part of his life it still surprises him some days that it’s all real.

“I’m starting to get a little jealous over here, Colonel.”

He turns, forcing his expression into an all too familiar smile. He’s used the same charming crooked grin his entire life.  It’s been a very long time since it turned any head but the one nested on a pillow in the bio-scan bed against the wall but he’s perfectly fine with that.  He’s _been_ perfectly fine with that since a pair of warm green eyes looked at him – no, looked _through_ him – and saw something worth keeping.

“Now, _Commander_ ,” he teases easily while making his way back to the side of his husband.  “You know she doesn’t hold a candle to you.”

A soft laugh that devolves into a rasping cough is his response. “Don’t even try to sell me that felgercarb, Starbuck.”  A frail, dry hand takes his.  “She’s still as beautiful as the first time we saw her.  I love her almost as much as I love you.”

Starbuck leans over and presses a kiss to the other man’s forehead. “Now who’s spouting poetry like a Libran bard, Apollo?”

Another coughing laugh. “I seem to remember a dashing young lieutenant who snuck poems under his captain’s pillow.”

Starbuck eases down into the chair where he’s spent several nights over the past month. It’s hell on old bones but after so many years by this man’s side, he can’t even sleep well when they aren’t together.  Starbuck grimaces at the memory rather than the ache in his joints.

“Dashing … dashing … I like that. And said captain had a very inspiring backside.  Sir.”

The honorific is tacked on with a wink and a wry salute. Apollo’s mouth quirks and he squeezes the hand holding his.  There isn’t any strength in the gesture which is just as well – the joints cradling his digits ache almost as much as his own.  He looks up and sees the blue gaze that he loves.  It’s lost none of its brightness over the yahrens although the face is a little more wrinkled.  Memories of silken wheat-gold hair splayed across his chest in the ship-board ‘mornings’ drift through Apollo’s mind and he smiles fondly.

“Still with me, handsome?”

Apollo blinks. Lately, he finds his mind drifting to the past when stolen moments between launches were all they could manage – kisses that burned as they pulled away only as much of their uniforms as they needed to be skin to skin ---

“Apollo?”

Again, the green eyes flutter and turn to find Starbuck watching in deep concern. A gentle hand smoothes over his forehead. 

“Sorry …” Apollo offers quietly.

Starbuck shushes him. “It’s ok, babe.  Good thoughts?”

Apollo can’t stop the smile. “Always … they’re of you.  Of our life together.”

“Ah,” Starbuck says, leaning back but keeping hold of his husband’s hand. “Well, at least I know I’m better looking there than I am now.”

Apollo rolls his eyes. “Still as vain as ever.”

“I prefer ‘concerned with my appearance’,” Starbuck chides. “No easy task being _the_ Starbuck, you know.”

“Never thought I had a chance,” Apollo sighs.

The blue eyes soften. Starbuck only ever shows this side of himself to Apollo – not one of his former lovers ever made everything around them fade away until the universe consisted of only two hearts and minds.  Even now, the sterile med-ship room seems to blur around the edges, reminding Starbuck of a certain ship made of light.  He blinks rapidly, fighting back the emotion that has threatened since his green-eyed treasure was diagnosed with one of the few diseases mankind can’t cure – their time together suddenly even more precious. 

“You were it from the minute I saw you, gorgeous,” Starbuck states hoarsely. “I just couldn’t bring myself to take the chance.”

“The great Starbuck? Afraid to gamble on a date?” Apollo teases.  He knows his beloved hurts but will never reveal that to anyone.  For all his swagger and bravado, Starbuck’s heart is a fragile stained glass window – beautiful but oh so easily shattered.

Starbuck makes a soft sound. “It wasn’t just a few cubits, Apollo.  It was _you_.” Conduct becoming a colonel or not, Starbuck leans back and props his booted feet up.  It’s easier to be the cocky Starbuck even if Apollo sees right through his exhaust fumes.  “I could always make back the currency … I could never get you back if I misjudged the way you felt.  You were my best friend … I couldn’t imagine life without you.”

The golden hair is white now and Starbuck keeps it cropped shorter than he did in their heyday but it’s still as soft as ever and prone to doing what it wants just like the man it adorns. An ambitiously long bang falls over Starbuck’s forehead and Apollo yearns to tuck it back like he always did once upon a time.

“Thank all the gods of Kobol for Chameleon, then,” Apollo says with a smile.

Starbuck frowns. “What?”

It’s been a long while since the old con-artist’s name has surfaced. Apollo remembers a bitter time between them when Starbuck learned of the man’s blood connection to him – about two yahrens too late.  It had been just before their Joining day and Starbuck had insisted on finding the man to witness their declaration to be Sealed.  Instead, they’d discovered he’d passed on but left behind a journal detailing everything Starbuck had ever wondered about.  The lieutenant had been furious that the truth had been kept from him. 

“When I found out from Cassie that he was your true father, I went to see him,” Apollo explains. “I wanted him to tell you … to give you the closure you needed.”

Starbuck sits up slowly. “And?”

“And he told me the same thing he told Cassie … he wanted you to live your own life. He made me swear not to tell you … and then he said I should ask for your hand.”

Starbuck frowns. “ _Chameleon_ told you to ask me?”

Apollo chuckles and fights down a cough. It develops into something harder and Starbuck surges to his feet.  He helps ease his husband a little more forward and levels the incoming med-techs with a devastating glare.  Apollo pats his husband’s hand while the staff flutters around him and adjust his breathing tubes.  He waves off the pain-killers however.

“Apollo …” Starbuck murmurs quietly.

“No.”

Starbuck sighs and gestures for the technicians to go once Apollo has been repositioned into a more comfortable recline and all the alarms are done beeping. He helps his husband sip at some water before sitting back in the chair.  Neither of them comments on the long strings of red brought up by the coughing.  They spent the better part of their lives at war – life is a gift and always has been.  Apollo looks apologetically at Starbuck who gives a sharp dismissive shake of the head.

“I know, I know,” he sighs. “I just hate seeing you hurt, gorgeous.  Always have.”

“Mmm, don’t I know it,” Apollo smiles. “You reminded me of Tigh just then … _colonel._ ”

Starbuck groans. “He’s somewhere laughing at me, I just know it.”

Apollo’s mood dims as he thinks to where their conversation was headed. “Starbuck … I shouldn’t have … it wasn’t right that I kept who Chameleon was from you.  That wasn’t my choice to make and I nearly lost you over it.”

“Nah,” Starbuck disagrees. He leans over and runs his knuckles along Apollo cheek.  The once smooth, tan skin is now wrinkled and pale.  The lush dark brown locks are silver like his own but the clouded green eyes are lit from within – a fire that drew Starbuck to it like the fabled moth.  “Ten base stars wouldn’t have kept me from you.”  He sighs.  “Besides … what did Chameleon and I have in common besides a penchant for playing Pyramid and charming the fairer sex?  I think of Adama as my father more than anyone.”

Apollo leans into Starbuck’s touch. “He always thought of you as his son.  Even before we were sealed.”  He points a gnarled finger at his husband.  “However, if you ever refer to me as the ‘fairer sex’, I’ll bounce a Triad ball off your skull.”

Starbuck laughs and so does Apollo, triggering another savage coughing fit. When it runs its course, the colonel gently presses a kiss to the now trembling lips. 

“Rest, love,” he murmurs. “Just rest – you’ll need your strength.  Boxey will be here soon with Dillon.”

“Troy.”

“His mother named him Boxey, Apollo. I’m just respecting her wishes.”

“He’s a colonel, Starbuck. Not a little boy.”

“I’m a colonel too, Apollo.”

“Retired! And he’ll have his own battle star in a few years – you said it yourself.”

Apollo rolls his eyes as Starbuck gives a dismissive wave. They argue but there isn’t any heat in the words because the debate is a loving one.  His son had been named “Boxey” by his mother.  It was a perfectly respectable Caprican name and no one thought anything of it until the boy came of age and started training to become a pilot.  After about three weeks, he’d suddenly and fiercely fought to change his name.  Apollo had defended Serina’s choice on her behalf … at least until Adama and Starbuck had pulled him aside and pointed out that the request had a great deal to do with a certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed cadet named Dillon. 

Unfortunately for Troy, his other father is even more stubborn than Apollo when so inspired – Starbuck calls the man “Boxey” regardless of the company they are in. He only relented once during Troy and Dillon’s Sealing ceremony … and then proceeded to arrange for an enormous cake at the reception that said “Clear skies, Boxey & Dillon”.

Helping his husband settle so that he can sleep, Starbuck leans close and murmurs, “You say he’s not a little boy but which daggit are we on now? Muffit Seventy-two?”

“ _Seven_ and you’re incorrigible.”

“You love me.”

“Forever.”

Apollo sinks into sleep still chuckling. He dreams of flying his Viper through the void, his beloved wingman just beside him.

* * *

“Colonel?”

Starbuck turns his head only slightly to acknowledge the nervous med-tech hovering nearby. She takes a deep breath and gestures at him.

“Sir, you’re more than welcome to return to your quarters. We’ll notify you if anything –“

Starbuck turns with his broadest smile. She tentatively smiles back and he walks over to her, laying one hand gently on her shoulder.

“Thank you for the offer but I think I’ll just stay here again tonight.”

“But Colonel Starbuck that chair can’t be comfortable! You should sleep in your own bed,” she chides, her nerves gone at his soft response.

The old warrior chuckles and glances at her i.d. tag. “Tech Gabriella, I’ve flown my fair share of deep patrols.  And on patrol your cockpit becomes home – eating, sleeping and bodily functions,” Starbuck tells the young woman, amused to see her color slightly.  He pats her shoulder.  “I’ll do just fine in the chair.”

She shakes her head. “The commander warned me you were stubborn.”

“Did he? Well, guilty as charged,” Starbuck returns. 

“I’ll bring you a blanket. It seems chilly in here for some reason.  Maybe the environmental controls are acting up –“

The lights suddenly flicker and instinct makes Starbuck turn toward the window. He moves slowly toward it, drawn by what he sees.  It makes his heart skip several beats and traps his voice behind a sudden tightening of his throat.  He refuses to look back toward the bed where Apollo lays.  He can’t.  Gabriella’s gasp reminds him that someone else is near just as brilliant white spheres zip toward them and then past the station, too fast for sensors to get a lock, Starbuck is sure.  A loud hum fills the air and begins to rise in volume.  Starbuck watches as a far distant blob of light appears and begins to grow closer as the hum reaches deafening levels.   Hands clasped over her ears, Gabriella stares in disbelief.

“That’s a ship!” she cries. “It’s headed right for the station!”

As if on cue, a collision klaxon begins to sound but it is quickly drowned by the sound that Starbuck feels to his very bones. He pulls the young tech against him and she goes willingly, convinced they are about to die.  Her face is hidden against him and he knows she is screaming but he cannot hear it nor see much of anything except the all-consuming light.

The faintest ghost of a kiss drifts across his cheek and Starbuck shivers. He turns and sees his lover standing just beside him dressed in an all-too-familiar uniform.  The jacket clasps gleam bright gold against the dark brown before color leaches away, leaving only pristine white and silver behind.  No longer trapped in a weak, frail body, Apollo is again the tall, imposing figure Starbuck fell in love with so long ago.  His green eyes are clear and full of all the love they ever shared between them.  He reaches up to brush away the tears that slide unbidden down Starbuck’s face.

“I’ll be waiting, lieutenant,” Apollo says with a gentle smile. “Don’t be long … that’s an order.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Starbuck replies.

The world returns in sudden, deafening silence. Gabriella pulls away to see if the colonel is alright but her attention is suddenly pulled to the medical scan-bed.  A gentle alarm is sounding.  Starbuck remains at the window as other medical staff surge into the room and frantically try to bring back a life that has slipped its launch tube and is long-gone into the black.  He looks down at the world he prayed one day they’d find and realizes he’s alone.  He’s the last of his squad.  The last of those adults that began the journey across the stars to find the brothers of man.  He looks over at the silent form covered by a simple white sheet and takes a deep breath. 

From within an inside pocket of his jacket, Starbuck removes a single, slender cylinder.  He’s been saving this fumirello for a long time.  He taps it out of the holder and deftly pulls out a lighter to use the built-in punches.  He prepares the smoke with a long-practiced hand and moistens the tip.  A chuckle escapes as he remembers how much Cassiopeia had _hated_  his habit, often referring to them as "smoldering weeds".  No one notices him leave the room and the halls are curiously empty as he walks down them to the private quarters he shared with Apollo.  Tendrils of fragrant smoke trail him but are dealt with easily by the air purifiers.  He goes into their rooms and sits down on the bed.  He can see Earth from here as well – it was the view Apollo craved most in his waning time.  Laying the fumirello down in a beautifully carved glass ashtray, Starbuck lies down.  He crosses his legs and lets his hands rest on a softer, but still relatively trim midsection.  He closes his eyes.

Starbuck exhales slowly. His heart is pounding in his chest.  After Apollo’s diagnosis, he’d received one of his own – his heart, weakened by so much drinking, smoking and the incredible stress of fighting to survive every secton – needed replacing.  It had taken all of his charm and not a few threats for the Earthside doctors to keep the information to themselves.  After all, Starbuck wasn’t the colonel who stood beside Commander Apollo as they led the last battlestar, _Galactica_ , to her final home for _nothing._ He took all the treatments in private and thought he kept his secret well but now he thinks Apollo knew all along.  He smiles.

“You always knew me better than anyone, gorgeous,” Starbuck sighs into the quiet room.

He’d been warned to drop the smokes because of the devastation they could cause – and they pleaded with him to undergo the surgery that would put a new, brilliant cybernetic replacement in his chest. Starbuck grins at the memory of those insistent pleadings that he put off with his devil-may-care attitude, ever the fabled gambler playing the odds.  No ... Starbuck had known in his heart of hearts that his Apollo was never going to return from this patrol and he'd seen absolutely no sense in prolonging a life without his green-eyed lover.  Besides, a lifetime of fighting against the chrome-plated nightmares had left him with a soul-deep distrust of putting anything even _vaguely_ resembling machinery in his body.  Even his brief encounter with Cy hadn't altered his viewpoint much.  A sharp pain bolted through his left side and Starbuck grunted.  He was never one to follow orders to the letter but now seemed as good a time as any to start.  After all, he was doing what he always did -- following his captain out on patrol.  One ship-length behind and to the right ... for the last time.

* * *

“Took you long enough, Bucko,” Boomer chides his friend as Starbuck strolls into the main gaming room of the _Rising Star_.

Starbuck grins at his friend. Gone is the gray hair and the scars that twisted his expression after a Cylon attack – his friend’s ebony skin is smooth and clear again, his piercing gaze filled with good humor.  A cheer goes up from one of the tables and Starbuck sees the rest of his squadron raising glasses.  He inclines his head but there’s only one person he wants to see …

Apollo comes around the tables.  The familiar confident stride is back as is the dark hair and the olive tan skin.  Starbuck thinks his heart has stopped before he realizes that it will never beat again.  He doesn't dwell on the thought long because his captain is in his arms and lips so warm and lush are pressed against his own.  The _Rising Star_ fades away and they're alone in Apollo's quarters, inherited from Adama when that indomitable spirit passed on.  Around them are all the signs of a life lived together ... books scattered across a desk, the odd empty bottle of ale, a deck of Pyramid cards stacked neatly on a table ... Starbuck remembers this time in their lives and he smiles broadly. 

"We're almost to Earth ... "

Apollo nods toward the view screen.  "The outer planets are just coming into view ... celebrations are breaking out all across the fleet."

Starbuck pulls back and looks deep into the green eyes.  "I might have never told you this but I was so proud of you -- you brought us all home."

Apollo leans in and brushes his lips across Starbuck's.  "I couldn't have done it without you, Starbuck.  You've always been my guiding star.  I missed you."

"Mmm," Starbuck hums against the other man's mouth.  He smiles.  "No alerts tonight."

"Nope, not a one."

"Forever?"

Apollo laughs.  "Forever ... are you going to spend all of it talking?"

Starbuck dives back in and demonstrates that he has lost _none_ of his fabled skills.  Later, when they lie beside one another with the stars just beyond the viewport, Starbuck truly understands that this is his eternity.  He'll never have to stop ... never have to roll out of bed half-asleep when the klaxon sounds … never have to watch his lover suffer aches and pains … never have to be alone again.  Of every hand he's ever been dealt in his life, this one ... this one beats all of them.  It’s been a long time to get here but he’s with his captain and that’s the only place he’ll ever want to be.


End file.
